The budget airline said refunds to customers cost it €25 million
(£22 million) in the six months to the end of September.

CEO Michael O'Leary said in a statement that the crisis has also
"challenged us to address the competitiveness of our pilot pay,
as well as pilot concerns about communications, career
progression and basing.

"We will now move from being "competitive" to offering materially
higher (over 20%) pay with better career prospects, superior
rosters, and much better job security than Norwegian, among
others, can offer," he said.

The new contracts will cost Ryanair an estimated €45 million
(£39.6 million) in the second half of its financial year and as
much as €100 million (£88 million) in a full year.

'Competitor unions will continue to rail and fail'

Ryanair
Chief Executive Michael O’Leary poses for a picture after a news
conference in Berlin, Germany, September 14,
2017.REUTERS/Axel
Schmidt

While O'Leary made concessions to pilots' demands, he
appeared unrepentant about Ryanair's previous practices.

He attacked a "renewed campaign of misinformation by competitor
airline pilot unions," adding: "We understand that the reason
they wish to denigrate Ryanair is because their airlines cannot
compete with us."

"As usual when these union airlines fail, such as Monarch, Air
Berlin and Alitalia in recent months, their pilots all come to
Ryanair seeking jobs that pay up to €175,000 p.a., deliver a
double bank holiday weekend every week, with the best promotions
record and, the best job security in Europe," O'Leary said.

"We will continue to work hard to deliver for our people, our
customers and our shareholders while these competitor unions will
continue to rail and fail."

"These strong H1 results reinforce the robust nature of Ryanair's
low fare, pan-European growth model even during a period which
suffered a material failure in our pilot rostering function in
early September," O'Leary said.

Ryanair says it expects customer growth to slow to 4% in the
second half of the year as a result of cancelled flights and says
costs in the second half of the year will rise by 2% as a result
of the measures to address the cancellation crisis.

Full year profits are still forecast to be between €1.4 billion
and €1.45 billion but the airline says this is "heavily dependent
on close-in H2 bookings, the absence of any further security
events, ATC strikes or negative Brexit developments."